On the day of the Festival of Colour, spare a thought for those for whom neon hues appear like an ugly shade of brinjal.

When a friend of Animesh Tripathi wasn't able to join the Indian Air Force because he had red-green colour blindness, the 17-year-old Delhi resident decided to make an application for computers and tablets that would alleviate colour blindness. ReColor is still in development, but Tripathi's basic research on it has won him a place at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, to be held in May in Los Angeles.

He is one of 12 participants shortlisted from India after a fair in Bangalore in November.

“I started working on this project from March to May 2013 for the Google Science Fair which was being held online,” said Tripathi, who is currently writing his 12th standard board exams. “After that, I decided to develop it further for the Intel fair.”

Colour blindness does not necessarily refer to a complete inability to differentiate between colours, but to a difficulty in perceiving the difference between red, green or blue hues. Seven per cent of the world’s population is colour-blind – one in every 15 people.

Not many people in India know about the condition, said Tripathi. While developing the app in its initial stages, he visited several eye specialists and organisations for the blind, but was unable to get much support from them. “It is difficult for people to know about their colour blindness as most people do not go to doctors to check for it,” he said.

According to Tripathi, there are several ways one might go about achieving colour correction while using a computer screen or tablet. An easy one is to change the contrast of colours so that differences are more easily perceived. He is more ambitious. He is working on an algorithm that will examine each pixel on a screen and individually process them to enhance colour perceptions.

The circles pictured below show how people with different types of colour blindness can be able to see the difference between colours.

“I want to develop a universal algorithm where you can customise how you view different colours,” he said. “I have narrowed it down to four algorithms now and I need to test them with more people.”

Tripathi is developing two versions of ReColor. One is a basic Google Chrome extension that will allow colour blind users to enrich their online experience with a single click. The other will be a native feature that can function on any device, from tablets to laptops, to enhance accessibility.

“I need the algorithm to be more precise in terms of effectiveness and narrow it down to one,” he added. “I have to cumulate all my research by April 20, which means I have to finish all my testing by the end of this month.”

After being selected for the fair in November, Tripathi and the 11 other participants attended a coaching camp to help them spruce up their projects for their final presentation in May. Mentors there said he needed to test his work on actual subjects who have the condition. For this, he needed a larger sample size.

He pitched the project on the popular crowdfunding website Indiegogo and exceeded his goal of $1,000 by $597. The money will go towards accessing a larger sample audience online.

Tripathi is no stranger to the world of project development. He learnt his first programming languages – C, C++ and others in the family – in the fifth grade. By the ninth grade he had learnt PHP, HTML, CSS and Javascript. This was also the year in which he started working on developing projects.

He now does website designs and front-end development, and hopes to attend college in the US later this year, once admissions come through.

If Tripathi wins at the Intel fair, he plans to give 30 per cent of the reward money back to the donors who contribute to his project online.

Adopting three simple habits can help maximise the benefits of existing sanitation infrastructure.

India’s sanitation problem is well documented – the country was recently declared as having the highest number of people living without basic sanitation facilities. Sanitation encompasses all conditions relating to public health - especially sewage disposal and access to clean drinking water. Due to associated losses in productivity caused by sickness, increased healthcare costs and increased mortality, India recorded a loss of 5.2% of its GDP to poor sanitation in 2015. As tremendous as the economic losses are, the on-ground, human consequences of poor sanitation are grim - about one in 10 deaths, according to the World Bank.

Poor sanitation contributes to about 10% of the world’s disease burden and is linked to even those diseases that may not present any correlation at first. For example, while lack of nutrition is a direct cause of anaemia, poor sanitation can contribute to the problem by causing intestinal diseases which prevent people from absorbing nutrition from their food. In fact, a study found a correlation between improved sanitation and reduced prevalence of anaemia in 14 Indian states. Diarrhoeal diseases, the most well-known consequence of poor sanitation, are the third largest cause of child mortality in India. They are also linked to undernutrition and stunting in children - 38% of Indian children exhibit stunted growth. Improved sanitation can also help reduce prevalence of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). Though not a cause of high mortality rate, NTDs impair physical and cognitive development, contribute to mother and child illness and death and affect overall productivity. NTDs caused by parasitic worms - such as hookworms, whipworms etc. - infect millions every year and spread through open defecation. Improving toilet access and access to clean drinking water can significantly boost disease control programmes for diarrhoea, NTDs and other correlated conditions.

Unfortunately, with about 732 million people who have no access to toilets, India currently accounts for more than half of the world population that defecates in the open. India also accounts for the largest rural population living without access to clean water. Only 16% of India’s rural population is currently served by piped water.

However, there is cause for optimism. In the three years of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, the country’s sanitation coverage has risen from 39% to 65% and eight states and Union Territories have been declared open defecation free. But lasting change cannot be ensured by the proliferation of sanitation infrastructure alone. Ensuring the usage of toilets is as important as building them, more so due to the cultural preference for open defecation in rural India.

According to the World Bank, hygiene promotion is essential to realise the potential of infrastructure investments in sanitation. Behavioural intervention is most successful when it targets few behaviours with the most potential for impact. An area of public health where behavioural training has made an impact is WASH - water, sanitation and hygiene - a key issue of UN Sustainable Development Goal 6. Compliance to WASH practices has the potential to reduce illness and death, poverty and improve overall socio-economic development. The UN has even marked observance days for each - World Water Day for water (22 March), World Toilet Day for sanitation (19 November) and Global Handwashing Day for hygiene (15 October).

At its simplest, the benefits of WASH can be availed through three simple habits that safeguard against disease - washing hands before eating, drinking clean water and using a clean toilet. Handwashing and use of toilets are some of the most important behavioural interventions that keep diarrhoeal diseases from spreading, while clean drinking water is essential to prevent water-borne diseases and adverse health effects of toxic contaminants. In India, Hindustan Unilever Limited launched the Swachh Aadat Swachh Bharat initiative, a WASH behaviour change programme, to complement the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. Through its on-ground behaviour change model, SASB seeks to promote the three basic WASH habits to create long-lasting personal hygiene compliance among the populations it serves.

This touching film made as a part of SASB’s awareness campaign shows how lack of knowledge of basic hygiene practices means children miss out on developmental milestones due to preventable diseases.

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SASB created the Swachhata curriculum, a textbook to encourage adoption of personal hygiene among school going children. It makes use of conceptual learning to teach primary school students about cleanliness, germs and clean habits in an engaging manner. Swachh Basti is an extensive urban outreach programme for sensitising urban slum residents about WASH habits through demos, skits and etc. in partnership with key local stakeholders such as doctors, anganwadi workers and support groups. In Ghatkopar, Mumbai, HUL built the first-of-its-kind Suvidha Centre - an urban water, hygiene and sanitation community centre. It provides toilets, handwashing and shower facilities, safe drinking water and state-of-the-art laundry operations at an affordable cost to about 1,500 residents of the area.

HUL’s factory workers also act as Swachhata Doots, or messengers of change who teach the three habits of WASH in their own villages. This mobile-led rural behaviour change communication model also provides a volunteering opportunity to those who are busy but wish to make a difference. A toolkit especially designed for this purpose helps volunteers approach, explain and teach people in their immediate vicinity - their drivers, cooks, domestic helps etc. - about the three simple habits for better hygiene. This helps cast the net of awareness wider as regular interaction is conducive to habit formation. To learn more about their volunteering programme, click here. To learn more about the Swachh Aadat Swachh Bharat initiative, click here.

This article was produced by the Scroll marketing team on behalf of Hindustan Unilever and not by the Scroll editorial team.